We frequently get posts in our Community pages asking about how to add music to an Office Live Small Business website. People want to know how to have a cool tune start playing when a visitor arrives on their Home page.
This is pretty easy to make happen, but here's something to think about: Let's say you're out driving and you pull up to a stop light. Another car then pulls to a stop in the lane next to you. The driver has her Oklahoma! soundtrack cranked up on her CD player and, since her car windows are rolled down, you and everyone on the block gets to listen to Surrey With the Fringe on Top.
If you're a fan of Broadway musicals, it's all good. If not, it's not.
So keep that in mind when you consider subjecting site visitors to your favorite Italian aria or heavy metal track. You run the risk of alienating or aggravating them with your choice of music. Even if you decide to add music, you’ll want to provide a control on the page that lets the visitor turn it off.
In addition, remember that licensing and copyright rules apply to music files played on your website. From a legal standpoint, the safest thing is to purchase royalty-free audio files, which are available from a number of online outlets. EZ-Tracks.com is an example of a site that provides free and legal music downloads along with the HTML code you need.
With those caveats out of the way, let's go over one way to add music to your Home page. I'll assume you have already saved to your computer the audio file that you want to play.
These instructions below are courtesy of Moses Paul, a support engineer for the Office Live Small Business Community:
First, you make the audio file available to your website.
1. Sign in to your Office Live site and click Design your site.
2. On the left side of the screen, click Document Gallery.
3. Click Upload and use the upload wizard to move your music file from your computer to the Documents Gallery.
Now, you embed this file on the Home page of your website via some HTML code.
4. Click Web site and, in the Page Manager area, click the Edit option for your Home page.
5. On your Home page, place the cursor in the content zone where you want to insert your audio file and display the control to turn the sound on and off.
6. Click Module from the task bar and then click HTML in the drop-down menu.
The HTML window is opened. Now you insert the code that contains a reference to the audio file you uploaded to the Document Gallery.
7. Copy the following text and paste it into the HTML window.
<embed src="/documents/musicfile.mp3" autostart="true" loop="true" hidden="false"></embed>
8. Replace the musicfile.mp3 text with the name of the file you uploaded to the Document Gallery.
9. Click OK to close the HTML box, and then click Save to retain the changes to the page.
Now when you launch your site, your music will automatically start (autostart="true"), continue to play over and over again (loop="true"), and there will be a controller displayed (hidden="false”) to let the user stop the music if they don’t like it.
Please click Add a Comment and tell me if you think music or sound effects enhance or lessen a website experience. Thanks.
Louise Rasho